Understanding Link Types

This tutorial will discuss understanding link types in Dreamweaver CS5.

So far we've been looking at individual pages in a web site. Now we're going to look at linking those pages to each other.

The World Wide Web got its name from its similarity to a web. Think of a spider's web, and think of all the lines connecting the points in the web.

Web links not only enable us to move between web sites and web pages. They also enable us to send emails, communicate via instant messaging and transfer files from place to place.

There are various types of link.

For example, here is a section of a page from MSN. Note the text that says "20 greatest games of 2010".

If I hover over that text, it changes to being underlined.

That tells me that there is a link there. I know that if I click on that link I will be taken somewhere else, i.e. to another site, another page on this site or another part of this page.

But, rather than click on then link, if I right click on it and choose Properties from the menu that appears, I see this.

This tells me the address (URL) that I will be taken to if I click the link. Now, when this web page was created that link was placed there, and that was done by either the person maintaining the web site or (more likely nowadays) by the software that created that page.

This type of link is http:// (HyperText Transfer Protocol) type of link, and is the most common type of link you will see.

There are various other types of link.

For example, you will often see a button or link asking the user to email. If you right click on that you will often see an address (URL) like this one.

The mailto: link enables the user to send an email directly from the web page. The use of the link means that the recipient's address is automatically added to the email.

Later on we'll be looking at FTP (File Transfer Protocol). This is used for transferring files between locations, and notably for uploading web sites to remote servers for publication. ftp:// links are therefore very important.

There are other link types, including news:// which connects you to a newsgroup, but the ones mentioned here are the main ones we'll need during these tutorials.

More Dreamweaver Tutorials

All Dreamweaver CS5 Tutorials - Will be complete by Januay 2011.
Buy Dreamweaver CS5

Find this information useful?

To link to this page from your website, simply cut and paste the following code to your web page.

It will appear on your page as: Understanding Link Types in Dreamweaver CS5

Share this Webpage

This site proudly build with Site Build It!